


Too Dumb To Learn From Past Experience

by A_Tomb_With_A_View



Series: Poly relationships, but you're dead [2]
Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Alex has anxiety, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Insecurity, Multi, Reggie has fibromyalgia, and then he gets not sad, and willie calls him stupid, communication is key folks, fuck fibromyalgia, he/they willie, look reggie is sad, tw: discussion of parental abuse, tw: mention of alcohol abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 12:02:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28653204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Tomb_With_A_View/pseuds/A_Tomb_With_A_View
Summary: When they’d woken up as ghosts, Reggie hadn’t really had time to register that it didn’t hurt when one of his boys touched him, including himself, because Julie was screaming and he hated screaming, and his zip had dug into his ribs, and his mind was still a whirling mess of it’s always been the four of us.
Relationships: Bobby | Trevor Wilson/Alex Mercer/Luke Patterson/Reggie Peters, Reggie Peters & Willie (Julie and The Phantoms)
Series: Poly relationships, but you're dead [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2099874
Comments: 32
Kudos: 150





	Too Dumb To Learn From Past Experience

**Author's Note:**

> i read a thing, and it annoyed me, so here we go  
> enjoy!
> 
> (disclaimer, fibromyalgia and dealing with shit parents is as always based on my experience)  
> thanks aesthetically_angsty for title creds)

When they’d woken up as ghosts, Reggie hadn’t really had time to register that it didn’t hurt when one of his boys touched him, including himself, because Julie was screaming and he  _ hated  _ screaming, and his zip had dug into his ribs, and his mind was still a whirling mess of  _ it’s always been the four of us.  _

After that, he’d just been too grateful that he could flop on top of Bobby and lay there for hours without his hip digging into Reggie’s side or the weight of his fingers on Reggie’s collarbone where his hand was loosely cupping the back of his neck pressing too hard to really dissect it. If there was one thing he’d learned in the godawful house he’d grown up in, it was that you don’t question when things go right, because the one night mom and dad seem to be getting along could be the only time you sleep through the night for months. So he tucked it away with the intention to think about it later, but then there was so much going on with Alex and Willie and Julie and Luke, and stupid pulses of pain at random intervals were far too commonplace for him to risk losing touch. 

Anything could be jinxed if you questioned it enough.

Besides, he’d been discovering other, newer problems, and he really didn’t need anything more occupying his mind when his brain was already buzzing into the wee hours as it was. 

There’d been the whole thing with not being corporeal all the time, which was fun when he was phasing through doors, but not great when there was molten metal spilling over his collarbone and falling down his sternum to flood his ribs, and his hand kept passing through the icepack when he tried to get just a little relief, and soon the burn in his chest was an overwhelming firestorm of the sharp jolts of heaving sobs of frustration because  _ for fucks sake, he could summon a guitar at will but he couldn’t pick up a fucking ice pack _ and the dull ache of  _ Sarah turns thirty-nine in three days  _ and the ever-present sting of the gleam in Alex’s eyes when he talked about Willie and the way Luke looked at Julie like he’d been put on earth just to whisper her name in awe. He spent hours sitting in front of the fridge with the door open and his mom’s voice ringing in his ears with echoes of  _ you’re wasting the fucking power, Reg, we really can’t afford that at the minute, not with how much your bleedin’ meds are costing us,  _ barely feeling the cold seeping out from it. 

Then there’d been the thing with actually beginning to process everything, which was all fine and well except for some reason things were getting  _ worse _ , and Willie suggested that actually dealing with everything might be allowing him to finally let down enough mental defences to react to the things around him like it was a good thing, but when Reggie was laying on his back in the garage at forty-two minutes past three in the morning and flinching so hard he woke up Bobby because a car door slammed somewhere down the street it didn’t feel much like a good thing. 

Then, obviously, there was the all-consuming anger and righteousness that had started to course through him from time to time - whenever he thought about his parents, really - because he’d fucking  _ died,  _ and one of his first thoughts, when they’d left the darkroom, had just been sheer gratefulness that he could finally hug Luke as tight as he had when they were younger and join in with the back-slapping and play wrestling because they were  _ dead _ , and made of  _ air,  _ and air didn’t have weight so it didn’t have pressure, so he could finally bear it all again, and his parents had taken that from him, really. According to the research he and Bobby managed to cobble together on Julie’s “tablet”, fibromyalgia was triggered in children through build-ups of intense stress and events so traumatic that the brain rewired how it processed pain. The only cause of stress when he’d been alive had been his mom and dad, and they’d managed to cause enough that the last two years of his life had been a mess of spending an hour curled up in bed because his hand had passed over his shoulder blade too roughly in the shower and the ache could last for ages, and now he was  _ dead _ and he was fucking grateful for so much of what death brought him and it made his blood boil. 

When he’d kissed Luke and then Alex, he’d not been expecting the soft golden glow, or Julie looking so fond and exasperated at the same time that he knew in his soul that she loved them every inch they loved her or Flynn staring with wide eyes and a slack jaw, and he wasn’t expecting Alex’s hand on his jaw pulling him in to hurt. 

“Hey, Reg, what’s wrong?” Alex asked gently. They were stood outside the Molinas’ house, too nervous about what Ray would say when they walked in, visible, to actually make that move, and Bobby and Luke were whispering to each other - either sweet nothings or lyric ideas, Reggie had no idea - and Alex had reached out, fingers pressing behind Reggie’s jaw just a fraction too hard. “You okay?”

Reggie shook his head mutely, splaying his hand across his clavicle and pressing down gently, the way he’d used to when he’d gone several days without a flare Before, and begun to wonder if he was making everything up. Alex’s expression when he looked back up told him the other knew exactly what was happening. “Jules could touch Luke -we’re not, we’re not ghosts anymore, not entirely. We consist of  _ something _ , and I can… I’m not-”

“Hey, hey, what’s going on?” Luke asked, suddenly at his shoulder. Bobby appeared on his other side, inches away like the last few months of hanging onto each other’s shoulders had never happened.

“We’re not made of air anymore,” Reggie joked weakly, pain jolting through the right of his torso in a sharp line. “Um. I don’t - sorry, uh, we gotta - I need… I don’t wanna talk to Ray but I need - can you ask Julie for frozen - I don’t know, whatever, peas will do I just, I need, I can’t-”

Bobby nodded and lightly pressed his hand against Reggie’s back before poofing out. 

Luke gently wrapped his hand around Reggie’s wrist and pulled his hand away from his collarbone. “C’mon, baby, none of that. We’ll get you sorted, yeah?”

Reggie nodded absently, trying to muscle past the way everything that had happened in the last hour or so was crumbling around him. 

If he had weight now, would his guitar? He’d spent over a year of his life never knowing if the strap of his guitar was going to be too much to take when he woke up, never knowing if today was going to be the day when Luke decided he needed a bassist he could rely on, who wouldn’t flake every so often because of an illness the doctors couldn’t prove or explain. Was this where he went from having everything - his boys, on the same page, at last, his new baby sister finally communicating with the girl she was head over heels for, the euphoria of performing and of being kissed and of being  _ loved _ coursing through him - to having it pulled just inches out of reach, close enough to touch while he was cursed with the knowledge that he wouldn’t be able to bear holding on too long?

“Hey, sweetheart, I need you to get out of your head for a little, is that okay?” Alex asked, linking pinkies with him, not speaking until Reggie managed to focus his eyes and nod tentatively. “We’ve learned to work around this before, and we can learn to do it again, understand me? We can, I don’t know, rob a pharmacy or something, if we need to, and we can relearn what you can take and what you can’t, okay?”

“We’d move heaven and earth for you,” Luke added, flashing him a joking smile. “What’s a little human nature gonna do?”

\----

“I hate them,” Reggie said bluntly, head resting on Willie’s stomach. It was easier with Willie. Reggie was still dead enough to touch him, but Willie was deader, and still made of air, and he couldn’t hurt Reggie by loving him, which made him safer, too. Plus Willie was an awesome person, and sometimes Reggie liked having a friendship that wasn’t etched into his bones. Being friends with Willie was a choice, not a necessity, and sometimes the way he needed Alex, Luke, Bobby and Julie was suffocating. Sometimes he thought that maybe he was so used to hurt and love coinciding that having three boyfriends and a little sister who would burn the world to the ground if they thought the heat would alleviate some pain was too much for his brain to handle. Willie didn’t hurt him and he didn’t overwhelm him, and getting to love someone just because he was fun and kind and wise instead of something he needed to survive was… healing. 

Willie carded their fingers through Reggie’s hair. “Who?”

Reggie shrugged helplessly. “All of them. My parents. The doctors. The Molinas. The boys. All of them.”

“You can tell me about it if you want,” Willie offered because they were an angel. “But you don’t have to.”

“I think my mom and dad are kind of self-explanatory, because they fucked me up big time and yesterday Mr Molina but a bottle down kinda hard, and I flinched and he looked like I’d killed a puppy in front of him, and my doctors are self-explanatory too because they hardly helped and now I’m too scared of re-fucking neural addiction pathways to get drunk enough to forget about all of this,” Reggie started, exhaling heavily. He’d never really said all this out loud, he just kept shoving it down so he could keep laughing and joking and not-hurting, but there wasn’t space behind his ribs for anything more, and he was just so  _ tired  _ of laughing when he wanted an hour to himself to scream and cry and rage.

Willie hummed quietly. “What about the Molinas and your boys?”

Reggie shrugged again, already flooded with guilt for even mentioning that. “I don’t hate them.”

“I know,” Willie reassured him. “Tell me anyway.”

“I guess I’m just… they remind me of what I can’t have?” Reggie tried, groaning when it didn’t quite sum up what he meant to say. He shifted so he was laid next to Willie, lacing his fingers with theirs. “I guess, I just got so used to being able, to being able to be so casual about touching them, and now I have to assess whether Alex’s arm around my shoulder is gonna be too heavy, or whether Luke brushing his thumb on my cheek is gonna be too rough, or whether Bobby’s shoulder is gonna be too bony to lay on before I can go anywhere near them and they’re right  _ there _ , and sure, I’m allowed to kiss them now, but cuddling is hard again, and cuddling is kind of the core basis of our entire friendship-slash-relationship.” 

“That sucks, man,” Willie said, squeezing his hand lightly. “Have you tried talking to them about it? I’m pretty sure they just want you to be happy.” 

“Nah.” Reggie shook his head. “I don’t like talking about it, and if I mention anything they’ll feel guilty, and I don’t want that. I just needed to say it, and I trust you.” 

“Aw, thanks, Reg.” Willie leaned across and kissed his temple. Instead of insisting he talk to the boys, or asking him weird therapy questions, he just grinned. “You wanna go throw shit into the Grand Canyon?” 

Reggie snorted and sat up. “Fuck yeah.” 

——

“Hey, Reg,” Luke called, throwing himself over the back of the couch, narrowly missing crashing into Reggie. “Am I good to hug you?”

Reggie hummed and took a moment to take stock. Honestly, his sternum still felt a bit achy from when Ray had accidentally dropped a plate earlier, but he’d been having a shitty week, and holding Luke would help, even if it would hurt. “Yeah, c’mere.”

Luke sighed happily and rearranged them so he was laying on his back, propped up by at least four couch cushions, holding Reggie against him in a way that Reggie imagined might look a bit like sea otters with his hands clasped over Reggie’s stomach. “I’ve missed you.”

“What d’you mean?” Reggie asked, prying Luke’s hands apart so he could play with his fingers. “I’ve been here the whole time.”

Luke shrugged a little. “You’re overthinking something, and you’re not telling me what it is, and you’re not telling me anything. I know it sucks, that everything is going wrong again, and I can’t even begin to imagine what you’re going through. But… well, I guess I thought… I just wanna be here for you, y’know? And I know you have to deal with us all the time, and we’re a lot, and I get that, I don't mean that you can’t do other stuff - especially now that people can see us and you can make new friends and stuff… I just. I want to be able to help, even if that just means watching shitty movies at two am again.”

“Luke, no,” Reggie said immediately, sitting up a bit so he could twist round to face him. “It’s not - I don't. I’m just sick of stuff, I guess, and I know you guys are loving being able to hug Julie and interact with lifers again, and I just don’t wanna bring the mood down.”

“Reg, sweetheart, we  _ love _ you. Just because you feel more obligated to make us happy now that we’ve acknowledged that it’s the boyfriend kind of love as well as the best friend kind of love doesn’t mean we don’t wanna know what’s going on with you. I’d rather be sad with you than happy away from you, and even when you’re here, you’re… distant, and I just wanna make things better,” Luke assured him, voice low and soothing. “Just tell me what’s been going on, yeah?”

Reggie nodded slowly. “Will you get the boys? I don’t wanna talk about it a whole bunch of times.”

Instead of moving Luke just covered Reggie’s ears and called through to the kitchen, shuffling them so Alex and Bobby could cram themselves onto the couch as well when they arrived but didn’t move them so much that he wasn’t holding Reggie anymore.

Reggie exhaled shakily once they were all in position, smiling when Alex squeezed his hand. “So, Luke said I’ve been kind of… distant lately, and I guess I just wanted to, like, explain why, and… be “honest”, as Willie insists I should be,” he began slowly. “Because I love you, and I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“Love you, too, Regbert,” Alex said easily, and Bobby leaned over his shoulder to echo the sentiment. 

“So, I guess… it’s just hard? Because I got used to not having to be careful about everything, and now I do again, and I just wish I could be learning to be with you guys, instead, and - and, sometimes being around you all when you’re figuring out what you like and what’s comfy and who can make Alex blush the most and who will Bobby fall asleep on fastest reminds me that I can’t do that all the time, and I’d gone into this with the expectation that I could?”

Bobby’s forehead creased. “I don’t… I’m not trying to be insensitive here, so just, smack me, if I am… but, you don’t need to be any more careful around us?”

Reggie frowned. “I don’t know what you mean. Of course, I do.”

“No, I just. Us not hurting you is on us,” Bobby tried to explain. “And we already know how to do that, because we figured it out. Sure, it sucks sometimes that you’re not up to cuddling always like you were a month ago, but we were ready to have to ask you a billion questions before hugging you for the rest of your life. I don’t know if I’m explaining this right, but… Is there much more than that to do?”

Reggie paused. “I… um.”

“Reg, baby, let me know if I’m extrapolating a bit much here, but…” Alex frowned, biting his lip uncomfortably. “Did you think we wouldn't do that for you anymore?”

“It’s not... I don’t... It’s not that I think you’re bad people,” Reggie defended. “It’s just that… y’know, I didn’t wanna burden you? I guess? Like, we finally figured out our relationship bullshit, I didn’t wanna drag you out of that.”

Luke’s arms tightened around him fractionally. “This is  _ part _ of our relationship bullshit, you dork. Y’think we’d rather you just sat a couple of feet away, hurting, so we didn’t have to worry about you getting hurt in a different way?”

“Well, if you put it that way, it sounds bad-”

“Regibald,” Bobby interrupted. “Just… let us care about you, yeah? Imagine if Alex started pulling away because he didn’t want his anxiety to bother us?”

Reggie pulled a face. “Well, that would be stupid.”

“Exactly,” Alex said. “We’ll let you know what’s too much. Just let us love you.”

\----

“Willie, I can  _ feel  _ you smirking at me,” Reggie complained, drop-kicking a football off the ledge. “Stop it.”

Willie laughed. “No can do, little man. You told them, didn’t you?”

Reggie whined pathetically. “How do you even know that?”

“Because you look happier, moron. Was I right, or was I right?”

“... you were right,” Reggie admitted, flashing him a small smile.

“One of these days, you fools are gonna realise that I’m always right,” Willie informed him primly. “And then you’re actually gonna get your shit sorted.”

“Nah.” Reggie shook his head. “We’re too dumb to learn from past experience.”

**Author's Note:**

> kudos and comments are much appreciated if you enjoyed it :)))


End file.
